Newspaper Printing Novel by Hussein

Saddam Hussein’s latest novel contains an apparent reference to the Sept. 11 attacks and returns to his favorite theme of good versus evil -- Arabs and Muslims fighting their enemies in the West.

The first excerpt of “Get Out, You Damned” appeared Thursday in Asharq al Awsat, a London-based Arabic newspaper, which is publishing the entire work over the next several days.

The manuscript was found in the Ministry of Culture after the fall of Hussein’s regime, indicating that it was written while Hussein was in power. The newspaper said it had received its copy from Hussein’s physician, Ala Bashir, who fled Iraq after the war.

Ali Abdel Amir, an Iraqi writer and critic who has read the manuscript, said the novel was similar in style to three others attributed to Hussein. Abdel Amir said it describes a Zionist-Christian conspiracy against Arabs and Muslims, with an Arab leading an army that invades the land of the enemy and topples one of its monumental towers, an apparent reference to the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center in New York by Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network.

The novel opens with a narrator, who bears a resemblance to the Jewish, Christian and Muslim patriarch Abraham, saying that Satan lives in the ruins of a Babylon destroyed by the Persians and the Jews. Hussein had extensively restored the remains of Babylon, one of the world’s most important archeological sites, just south of Baghdad.

Hussein’s close aide and deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, was quoted by his American interrogators shortly after his surrender to U.S. troops as saying Hussein had spent most of his time in recent years writing novels, leaving key decisions to his sons and other trusted relatives.